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In Like Flynn
France's new President Nicolas Sarkozy has wasted no time making up with Libya following the Gadafy regime's release of six Bulgarian medics yesterday. As Eurocrats huff over the Sarkozy family snatching publicity for their release at the last minute and French Socialists complain that the entire event has been stage-managed to give the First Lady Cécilia Sarkozy a foreign policy role, Sarko has jumped on the first flight to Tripoli and is currently trying to flog guns and warplanes to the Libyans.
Sarkozy is travelling under the auspices of improving EU-Libyan relations. These were proposed to improve following the release of the prisoners, but few reckoned that any European leader would move so quickly. Nevertheless, Speedy Sarko has a packed agenda.
He is accompanied by his Immigration Minister, Brice Hortefeux and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. Sarkozy says that he wants to see Libya assist in stemming the flow of illegal immigrants from North Africa into Southern Europe; he is also calling for Libya's help in the fight against terrorism. Furthermore, building a Mediterranean Union of north and south was one of Sarkozy's victory speech promises.
However, ethical foreign minister Kouchner may want to excuse himself when Sarko and the Libyans get down to the real business: Selling French contracts and the Rafale warplane in particular.
The FT reports that France is hoping for contracts in high-tech and Tripoli's international airport. Areva, France's nuclear power giant, has been approached to look into building nuclear reactors in the country.
Relations between France and Libya have been fraught for four decades. Both competed for influence in the region, France as the former colonial power of much of western North Africa, Libya as the chief post Nasser exemplar of hard-man Arab nationalism. France accused Libya of bombing a French civilian aeroplane in 1989 and found six Libyans guilty of the terror attack which killed 170 people.
Libya always denied any role in the attack, but paid the families compensation of between $3000 and $34,000.
While negotiations for compensation payments for those murdered in the Lockerbie attacks in 1988 were taking place in 2004, France entered the fray again and demanded increased payments to French victims of the 1989 bombing of a French civilian airliner over Niger.
France threatened to veto the Lockerbie payout if Libya did not comply; eventually a $170 million deal was settled.
